Page 83 of Riot Rules
“Carrie?”
I snap my head up, locating the person who just called out my name. Principal Harcourt is heading across the library toward me at a fast clip, her face very serious as usual. She smiles tightly when she reaches the table I’ve been studying at, rapping her knuckle in a business-like manner against the wood.
“Alderman would be pleased to see you studying so hard,” she says in a low, conspiratorial voice. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to do your work here, when you have so much space upstairs, though. I have to say, I think that’s my favorite room in the entire academy.”
She still thinks Chloe Khan traded rooms with me out of the kindness of her heart. I don’t have it in me to tell her the truth: that Dash bribed the girl. Within twenty-four hours of seeing him in the observatory with his cock in Amalie Gibbons’ mouth, I’d begged Chloe to exchange rooms with me again. She’d looked at me like I was crazy, and then refused point-blank to switch back. Wouldn’t even consider it. She told me that she liked being so much closer to the second-floor showers, but after I bugged and pestered her for a few days, she let slip that Dash had told her that she couldn’t switch back underanycircumstances. That was confusing as hell. The guy blatantly trampled all over my feelings, crushed my heart under his heel, didn’t give a shit about me whatsoever, and then told her their deal was off if she accepted her old, much larger bedroom back. Maybe forcing me to stay in the beautiful room, with all of the beautiful things he bought me, was just another form of punishment on his part. One that was very effective indeed.
I hate the room now. I spend as little time as possible there, only returning from the library or from Presley’s room to sleep, when my body absolutely demands rest.
I smile stiffly at Principal Harcourt. “Is there something I can do for you, Principal Harcourt? I’m just in the middle of my Spanish assignment.”
She nods. “There is. We have a new girl starting at the school in a couple of days. Her name is Elodie. She’ll be taking Mara Bancroft’s old room, which means she’s on your floor. As student teacher liaison, it’ll be your responsibility to make sure she gets situated and settles in properly. Wolf Hall can be very overwhelming and intimidating to new students. I’d like you to show her around a little. Make her feel welcome. Show her where her classes are. That kind of thing. Think you’re up to the task?”
We’ve had a slew of new students recently, but none of them have seemed to stick. With girls repeatedly transferring in and out, the bedroom that Mara used to occupy might as well have a revolving door on it. A few of the girls on the fourth floor have begun to gossip about the room being haunted.
“Sure. Of course. No problem.” My voice is flat. The voice of someone who has lost the ability to give a flying fuck aboutanything. Harcourt’s oblivious to my caustic tone. She takes me at face value, somehow tuning out how unhappy I sound.
“Good. Thank you. I knew I could count on you, Carina. And I did explain that changing rooms would involve extra responsibilities earlier in the year.”
And boy, oh boy, hasn’t she taken advantage of that at every turn. I shoot her another brittle smile. “You did.”
“Wonderful. If you could be sure to show her around, bring her to the office for her schedule, that kind of thing, that would be greatly appreciated.”
“Of course.”
Principal Harcourt looks like she wants to say something else. She opens her mouth, but then thinks better of it. “Okay. I’ll leave you to it, then. Let me know if you need anything.”
35
DASH
As a staunch atheist(much to my mother’s despair), I haven’t given much real thought to heaven or hell. I’ve always known that neither existed, so I’ve spent very little time imagining the very best or the very worst of places that a soul might languish for all of eternity. However, I’ve discovered recently that I might have been wrong. Maybe heaven and helldoexist. After all, I’ve been living in purgatory since last July, caught in this in-between world where I experience the sweet relief of seeing the girl I love every day, only to be punished by the unbearable sting of not being able to speak to her, touch her, or even fucking look at her at the same time.
I’ve learned a lot about how far the exquisite depths of pain can go. At first, I figured I wouldhaveto hit the bottom of the well at some point, but after sinking deeper and deeper, week after week, down into this pitch-black pit of despair, I understood that I was wrong. The void inside me could keep on hurting—could andwould—and the only thing for me to do was learn how to bear it without cracking.
I hate myself.
HATE.
But the story Alderman told me checked out. After he dropped me back at the house, still bleeding profusely all over myself, I pulled out my laptop and typedHannah Rose Ashford, Grove Hill, into the search engine. The information that spun up on the screen was terrifying. A range of local newspapers called the little girl unhinged. Deranged. Unstable. Others claimed she was a savant, mature for her eleven years, and suggested there had been some malign intent on her part. They indicated that the murder of Kevin Winthrope had been planned ahead of time and discussed the possibility that the girl’s mother had been in on the wicked plot to end the man’s life, too.
Not one single article or account spoke of abuse or domestic violence. No one said anything about sexual assault or proposed that the little girl fled the scene of the crime because she was scared. In their eyes, the girl would have stayed if she was innocent. What reason would she have had to run if she’d acted in self-defense?
I’d stayed up that night, pacing up and down in my bedroom, trying to concoct a way to deal with the new information that I’d learned from Carrie’s guardian that wouldn’t involve breaking her heart. But no matter what convoluted, half-cocked, hair-brained design I came up with, the risks were just always too unacceptable.
So long as Carrie was anywhere near me, she would also be in the vicinity of Wren and Pax, and the cops were not done grilling us over Mara back then. They were using her as an excuse; with Mara’s letter placing her somewhere in California, the cops knew she was fine. Mara was a great excuse to grill us over our lifestyle here at the house, though—the drug use, the parties, the underaged drinking, and what they referred to ashazing, which seriously offended Wren. When Wren told us what the cops had said to him in his interview, days prior to Alderman’s midnight visit to me, I was all too aware that we were going to be living under a microscope for a long time.
And to be fooling around with Carrie while all of that was going on? To put her at risk, should someone recognize her somehow, or start asking questions, picking at little details that didn’t quite make sense…
I couldn’t do that to her. I’d have killed myself before endangering her. It just wasn’t worth it. So, I did what Alderman asked of me, and I arranged something so heinous and awful that I knew Carina would never forgive me.
It wasn’t what it looked like from Carrie’s perspective. Amalie was all too willing to suck my dick for real, but I reminded her of the deal and paid her an extra hundred to keep her grubby little mitts to herself. I marked it all out. Did the math. Measured the angles. I triangulated the perfect spot to stand and taped it out on the floor like I was nothing more than an extra in a shitty horror movie. I knew that, from where she was standing in the entrance to the observatory, Carina would see Amalie on her knees, going down on me. I lowered my pants down over my hips, leaving my waistband at my mid-thigh, exposing enough skin to make the whole scene look believable.
What Carrie didn’t see from her vantage point in the doorway was how pathetic my flaccid dick looked hanging there between my legs. How Amalie couldn’t look back at Carrie like she was supposed to, like I fuckingpaidher to, because she was having such a hard time stifling her laughter.
“God, this issodumb. She’s never gonna believe this is how I give head, dude. Everyone knows you’re supposed to deepthroat a cock and then massage with your tongue—”
Amalie did actually blow me once, at one of the very first Riot House parties. I’d gotten so drunk, I kind of recalled her doing this to me, and me thinking that it was a really weird way to give someone head. She’d wanted me to fuck her after I’d failed to come in her mouth at the party. Had wanted me to fuck her at the observatory, too. Once our little rouse was over and Carrie fled, Amalie tumbled back onto her ass in fits of laughter.
